This invention relates to an electric motor control and more particularly to an electric motor control for an electric motor powered vehicle for providing improved braking operation therefor.
A wide variety of types of vehicles are frequently employ electric motors for their propulsion. These types of vehicles may take many forms such as golf carts and the like. In connection with these vehicles, it is common to utilize a frictional brake system for the vehicle which is of the type used with wheeled vehicles that are powered by gasoline engines or other forms of internal combustion engines. These frictional brakes may be either hydraulically or electrically actuated. This obviously adds to the cost of the total vehicle.
There have been proposed systems which regenerative braking is employed for the vehicle. With this type of arrangement, when the operator wishes to decelerate the vehicle, the motor is switched to operate as a generator and either charges the battery or discharges its generated current through a resistive load so as to provide regenerative braking. However, with these systems, conventional frictional brakes also are employed.
It is, therefore, a principle object of this invention to provide an improved braking arrangement for an electrically powered vehicle wherein the electric motor can provide substantially all of the braking force for the vehicle.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an improved braking system for an electric powered vehicle wherein the electric motor is utilized as a brake in addition to the regenerative braking normally employed in connection with such vehicles.